checking in from brooklyn

hey ya'll!

it's nice to hear from those of who have seen far off and exotic places. i too have ventured far: canarsie, brooklyn. last week i started an internship with this non profit called heart of brooklyn. it provides a connection between all the major cultural institutions of downtown brooklyn (museum, botanic garden, zoo, etc.). they also run this weekly afterschool program in canarsi that i went to help out with. it's for fourth graders who live in public housing and normally wouldn't go to places like art museums. so we bring the museums and things to them! the kids were pretty adorable but also live a very very different life. as we were walking from their school to the community center, these three girls were talking about how somebody was threatening to jump one of them. remember, they're in fourth grade.

other than that i've been leading a boring life. reading, watching movies, sending tons of emails.

yesterday i went to my dad's cousin's wedding. that was a trip. everything had to be said in three languages: russian, english, and hebrew. and somehow sunrise sunset was deemed an acceptable wedding song (it's from fiddler on the roof for those who don't know. it would be like playing la vie boheme at your wedding. which, now that i think about it, doesn't sound like that bad of an idea).

me and the young hooligan at the wedding.

wishing you all the best

alex

Hello Wonders (and honorary member, Kim)

It's also been awhile for me since I've seen everyone, so hi :) hope things are going well. Am liking this blog idea...thanks, Jono. I've missed seeing you all on a regular basis. As some may know, I had been planning on going back to Sydney for another semester and recently changed my mind for a variety of reasons, none of which are particularly interesting. So I'll be helping Leiszle report on Brown occurrences...since I'm not sure we can rely on Eric and Andy :)

Sydney was pretty darn cool. Beautiful city with beautiful beaches. Which is mostly what Leiszle and I got out of the semester. Sydney is a great place to go for relaxation and fun...forget studying. Got to cuddle a koala and pet a dingo which is all I really wanted out of life. Tried to smuggle a baby koala home and didn't make it out the zoo, I'm sorry to report. Best nights there were the ones we didn't plan out. Once we went into the city planning on having drinks with a friend, but everything was closed so we ended up eating potato wedges on Coogee Beach around midnight. Good stuff.

Ozzies are exactly like you would expect from pop culture and love to tease us poor uneducated Americans. Two friend had Leiszle and I convinced (along with seveal other hapless foreigners) that there is a creature called a drop bear, which is something like a polar bear that drops out of trees on unsuspecting campers in the outback. The closest I came to one of these was a drunk kid leaping out a tree whilst yelling DROP BEAR!

There are also spiders as big as your hand called Huntsmans I believe. They're massive and apparently don't like soft places. Again, we were convinced by some craft Australians that these spiders will actually chase you down. I only believed that for a second. Well, maybe two.

Also, never say you root for a team while in oz...it really, really, doesn't mean the same thing there.

I'm sure Leiszle will have more to add at some point. It was an awesome place to spend six months but I'm very ready to be back at Brown (even though I am again living in Keeney!). Looking forward to seeing those of you who are there and hearing from those of you who are not.

Love,
Taryn

I like my friends how i like my coffee...

always keeping in touch! Also black turkish.
I'm going to post my skype name and it would be neat if the rest of you did the same so we don't have to go fishing through old emails to figure it out.

Jono	Jono.Warren
Ben	B.Skerritt
Paul	Pablo.Woz
Kim	kGemme
Eric	Eric.Rudisaile
Alex	Alexandra.Lubensky

Boldness...

has genius, power, and magic in it.

Let's keep in touch, cool?